Syria predicament

As Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian Republican, says, there are a lot of questions that need answering. Here are a few of them. The questions, that is — alas, not the answers.

— 1. Chemical weapons are horrifying. Morally repugnant. But are 1,400 deaths by sarin more morally repugnant than the preceeding 100,000-plus Syrian deaths by more conventional weapons?

— 2. If the answer to No. 1 is yes, what’s the point of only a limited military response — “a shot across the bow” as President Obama has put it? If the answer is no, same question: What’s the point of only a shot across the bow?

— 3. If a more extensive strike is made (as for example Sen. John McCain insists on) with the objective of impeding or undermining the Assad regime, what’s the likely result? Who will then rise to the fore in Syria? Al-Qaida-allied militants? U.S.-backed “rebels”? Can we really distinguish one from the other? Can we really influence the outcome of regime change?

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4. Does our acknowledgement of a morally repugnant situation abroad translate into a moral obligation for our military intervention? If so, why didn’t we intervene in, say, the Sudan? Or Somalia? Why aren’t we now intervening in, say, the Central African Republic?

5. Granting that grave strategic considerations loom regarding Syria — especially Iran’s regional hegemony and Israel’s security — are those strategic interests strengthened or weakened by a strike on Syria? Can we make more than a speculative stab at that question?

6. Granting further that intelligence is, at best, hopefully a good guess — seldom if ever a 100 percent certainty — is our intelligence a good guess? Or just our best guess? Should the fact that our estimates of 1,429 Syrian sarin deaths vs. the United Kingdom’s estimate of 350 deaths and France’s estimate of 281 deaths give us pause about the reliability of intelligence? Does Anthony Cordesman, former senior Pentagon official, now of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have a point worthy of skeptical attention when he declares the American estimate of exactly 1,429 Syrian sarin deaths an “absurdly overprecise number”?

8. If a military strike is being contemplated only as a “face-saving gesture” in response to President Obama’s “red line” bluster (as some Republican critics are quick to assert), does that necessarily discredit it? Can a President of the United States lose face without the United States also losing face?